The English department of a technical college has developed a writing program that uses real audiences and real situations to better prepare students for the communication requirements of their professions. The exercises for each class are focused on the course content. In an advanced technical communication course, senior design, the students are…

To be actively involved in their own writing requires that students make decisions. In order to build a new approach for our Technical/Professional Writing classes, we assessed our individual teaching practices and past experiences, studied current scholarship on teaching writing, and conducted research on technical writing in our local community.…

The J. M. Tull School of Accounting at the University of Georgia has developed a program that integrates the teaching of writing skills with the regular accounting courses. Students in a three-course sequence write a total of eight papers--technical, memos, or reports--in assignments that resemble writing tasks encountered by professional…

The commonalities between the teaching of writing and the teaching of English as a Second Language (ESL) are discussed. With common instructional practices of iterativeness, contextualization, and cognition delineated between the two fields, four levels of literacy for ESL students are specified. Four levels of ability are distinguished,…

Recognizing that writing across the curriculum supports the idea that writing is an integral part of the total learning process, this paper describes the philosophy of the writing program at Blue Ridge Technical College (North Carolina). It begins with some comments and thoughts on what makes writing worthwhile and how to judge good writing.…

Drawn from a conference that addressed the problems and challenges facing technical communication educators, the papers in this collection deal in general with career opportunities and educational programs in technical communication. Specifically, the papers discuss the following topics: (1) internship programs and job interviews at Rensselaer…

Staff development was provided for academic and vocational teachers interested in improving their students' reading and writing skills. The first step was to examine the need. Survey data collected from students and vocational program completers from Southern Regional Education Board-Vocational Education Consortium pilot site schools revealed a…

Prepared by representatives of government, business, industry, and education, the papers in this compilation deal with a variety of aspects of technical communication. The approximately 150 papers are arranged according to the following categories: advanced technology applications, graphics and production, management and professional development,…

This document describes the Maryland Hospital Skills Enhancement Program, a collaborative effort of the Maryland Hospital Association, Essex Community College, and three Maryland hospitals that was designed to improve the literacy/basic education skills of hospital employees in 11 targeted service occupations. Two curriculum models were used:…